What was Saul thinking as he rode to Damascus? If I put myself into Saul’s mind and heart, I think I would feel very sure of myself and my righteousness. My jaw would be set, my gaze steady, my thoughts moving quickly from one detail of stomping out this heresy of “the Way” to another. My back would be straight; I would ride tall. Yes, when I got to Damascus, I would claim for God again some of his people who had wandered off the path of the Law. The Law of God was to me the Face of God. I loved it, knew it well, and was absolutely sure it was the best revelation of God that there could be.
But then….then, there was a bright light and a voice—a voice that I recognized as a voice of authority—though I did not know who it was. “Who are you, sir?” I said.
“I am Jesus the Nazorean, whom you are persecuting.”
Oh.
Oh!
How could that be?
Yet—as Saul, my submission and trust in the Father God I knew was absolute, so I was open to what I heard—even if the voice said He was this person that up until now I had seen as the opposite of God.
“What shall I do, sir?” I said.
“Go into Damascus and there you will be told about everything appointed for you to do.”
Conversions
Saul met Jesus on the road to Damascus. When he did, he changed, and then his life changed.
This conversion on the road to Damascus is the event we remember and honor today, but it was not the only conversion of Paul. There was his conversion to work with the original Apostles and to take leadership from Peter. There was his conversion to move the Christian Way from Asia Minor to Europe and his conversion to preach to, teach, and baptize Gentiles. There was his personal conversion from student to evangelist to writer in prison to martyr.
Like the rest of us, Paul encountered Christ many times in many ways as God revealed himself again and again—each time with a change in direction and new level of faith for Saul who became Paul.
As I have reflected on Saul’s conversion to Paul the Apostle this week, I have thought about my own conversions. The was one in childhood, one in college, one in my late 20s, one at a very dark time in my life around age 40, another as I healed from my husband’s death, and a last one that began in 2010.
How Does Conversion Happen?
This last one led me to study “What is conversion?” The Greek word metanoia (to repent) says it well, as does the line from Sunday’s Gospel, “Repent and believe the Good News.” In the moment on the road to Damascus, conversion meant that Paul encountered God . Then, from that encounter, he saw things differently, and changed direction to follow the Truth of God he had seen. He did an “about-face” to align himself with the God he loved. He turned to match his life to the Truth he had encountered. Because he did that about-face, God gave him community to love and teach him, as well as a new job—Evangelist to the Gentiles.
Conversion was my fascination while a student at St. Meinrad. I wanted to know, “How can we understand conversion so we can foster it?” I studied much, but I did not find an answer. Part of the difficulty was that conversion is dependent on an encounter with God. God takes the lead. People said, “Mary, you can’t harness God.”
Another difficulty was that because most Catholics are baptized as infants and then hopefully grow up in the faith, many within the church believe that we go to confession and repent of particular sins, but we have no real need of conversion. That’s for people who are not yet baptized or who come from other faiths. We grow in virtue, but we have no need to turn back to God because we never fully turn away.
Yet my experience reviewing my conversions tells me God has brought me to six major about-face turns. Some were turning away from overt sin to live by God’s rules. Most were more matters of seeing what I needed to do to follow Christ fully–conversions that came from sins of omission.
None of my conversions knocked me off my horse. None blinded me. None changed my name.
For the record, only that first one did all that to Paul. We read about his later conversions in Acts and in his letters. They were less dramatic and more like what happens to me: There is some event that interrupts the direction I’m going; I recognize (maybe gradually) I must change direction; I make the change, and God guides me through people as I live out the change. As I live out the change, God grows and shows in me in a new way.
A Model?
Reflecting on Paul’s path and my own, I see a consistent pattern I could not see six years ago:
- A period of readiness. Paul must have learned a lot about the followers of “the Way” while he persecuted them. His fighting what seemed wrong with them prepared him to join and instruct them.
- An interrupting event that includes an encounter with Truth which has not been perceived before. This is the voice and light of God.
- An about-face of turning away from what is not of God (be it from ignorance, inertia, complexity of life, or sin) to turn to God through the Truth which is now perceived. Metanoia, repentance, conversion.
- A period after conversion of growing into the new Truth. Life fills in with guidance and love from others, time to digest, and further information/habit change to cement the repentance into a new, more Godlike way of living.
- Being sent to build God’s Kingdom–maybe just within a family–but doing something to make God’s love and grace more present in the world.
Why This Is Important
Bishop Barron reported last week that about 7% of the registered Catholics in an average parish are “in.” They attend mass in person or now virtually. They volunteer and give money. Their active faith leads them to love God and neighbor as faithful Catholic Christians. Another 11% are completely checked out. But the other 82% are in that state of readiness for conversion. See Word on Fire post from January 18. They are the ones most at risk of drifting away during COVID. They are on their way to Damascus.
I can’t help but believe that they are among the ones God is hungry to lead to an about-face. He sees them and he loves them. How does God create encounters for them? That truly is God’s job. And it is each person’s responsibility to make the choice to do an about-face to change when God meets them on the road.
But I believe that we all have major roles in those other parts of conversions. We can create readiness through relationships, worship, and education. We can support people as they process crisis events or the more gentle conversion calls we heard about in Sunday’s Gospel. We can be community as people mature as disciples. We can foster opportunities for them to be sent to others.
We can be like St. Paul AFTER the road to Damascus.
Prayer:
So many years, Lord, You have kept me tethered to this topic of conversion. What do I pray for? To escape it? No. To see Your Face again? Yes! To be sent? For sure. But, as Thomas Merton said once, “The fact that I want to do your will and believe that I am doing it does not necessarily mean that I am actually doing it.” Lead me, guide me, Lord. Lead us all. Lead each person who reads this reflection to pray to meet You on the road. Metanoia us all.
